Cast goes whole hog wild for film

March 02, 2007|By Los Angeles Times.

In the new comedy "Wild Hogs," Tim Allen, John Travolta, William H. Macy and Martin Lawrence play weekend warrior buddies from Cincinnati who jump on their Harleys and take a road trip to the Pacific in hopes of pepping up their humdrum suburban lives.

Although filled with slapstick and more than a few off-color jokes, the movie's underlying theme is how many Baby Boomers feel that they have compromised their values while losing the idealism of their youth.

"We thought we could change the world, and, to be fair, we did change the world," Macy said. "We stopped the war. We got rid of the president, and we changed everything. But life overtook us. And there are hundreds of thousands of Harley riders who are trying to regain that feeling."

"The revolutionary . . . becomes the establishment," Allen said.

In the film, which opens Friday, Allen's Doug is happily married with a son but is bored with his mundane job as a dentist; Travolta's fast-talking Woody has lost his swimsuit model wife, his fortune and his job; Macy's Dudley is a computer nerd who is too shy to talk to women; and Lawrence's Bobby is a henpecked plumber.

Two of the actors had a history with motorcycles.

Travolta has been riding motorcycles since he was a struggling young actor in L.A. in the early 1970s.

"It was economical transportation in California," he said. "I would run around to my auditions in a motorcycle. You would store it easily when you left town."

He still borrows friends' Harleys to ride. "For years I had a Honda 450, which is a moderate-sized bike," Travolta said. "I am looking forward to owning a Harley again."

Travolta is passionate about bikes because there's a certain sensation to riding a bike. "Your body gets exhilarated, and you get excited physically. There's a mental freedom from imagined barriers that you have."

Just like Travolta, Macy tooled around L.A. on a motorcycle in the 1970s. But because he was rusty and had never ridden a Harley, Macy took lessons from the film's stunt coordinator, Jack Gill. It was love at first sight for Macy and his machine.

"There is nothing like it, man," Macy said. "It is as close to flying as you get on the ground. It feels fantastic. It has a little bit of the patina of the outlaw about it, and there is the nature aspect of it.